The increased computing power of today's computer systems leads to a proportionately increased energy requirement. Thus, reducing the total amount of energy for a computing center is an important issue in the design and layout of the computing center. Typical server rack rear doors are structured to blow the hot exhaust air horizontally into the room, leading to degraded total energy efficiency for cooling. One possibility of reducing energy includes minimizing the mixing of cold supply air and hot exhaust air within the computing center. For example, there are rear doors which are designed to actively move the hot air from the server rack into a specific direction. However, these rear doors utilize fans to move the hot air, which add to the total energy requirement for the computing center.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a top view of a typical arrangement of server racks 10 in a computing center. As illustrated in FIG. 1, the computing center includes a first row of server racks 11, a second row of server racks 12, and a third row of server racks 14. In particular, first row of server racks 11 includes first server rack 15A, second server rack 15B, and third server rack 15C; second row of server racks 12 includes first server rack 16A and third server rack 16C; and finally, third row of server racks 14 includes first server rack 17A, second server rack 17B, and third server rack 17C. Each server rack in the rows is orientated such that the cold inlet air used to cool the server racks and the hot outlet air created from the cooling of the server racks is blown in the same direction. This set-up creates cold aisles 18 and 19 and a hot aisle 20 between the various server rack rows. However, one common drawback to this set-up becomes apparent once one or more of the racks is removed from the computing center. When, as illustrated in FIG. 1, the second server rack is removed from second row 12, a gap is created in the row which allows the hot air from hot aisle 20 to flow through and finally mix up with cold air in cold aisle 19 prior to being blown through third row of server racks 14 in order to cool the server racks therein. The mixing of air from both the hot and cold aisles causes a net decrease in the energy coefficient for total cooling, which could therefore lead to a cooling problem for third row 14 in general, and particularly for second server rack 17B in third row 14.
Based on the foregoing, there exists a need for an improved system and method for controlling the hot air exhaust from a server rack in order to increase the total energy coefficient for cooling while substantially avoiding any mixing of cold supply air and hot exhaust air.